Legal affairs committee in dossiers dogfight

LEADING members of Parliament’s legal affairs committee are battling to stop it becoming a “lame duck” after rival committees launched a smash and grab raid for the right to scrutinize some of its best legislative dossiers.

The legal affairs assembly has already lost some of its workload to the internal market and consumer protection committee, as part of Parliament’s post-enlargement and post-election overhaul.

But German Christian Democrat Klaus-Heiner Lehne told European Voice the legal affairs assembly will not give up any more of its prized possessions without a fight – adding that committee chairs would clash on the issue later this month.

“There are some dossiers that are disputed right now,” said Lehne, who gained his reputation as a Parliament heavyweight after he plotted the rejection of the controversial takeovers directive from the meeting rooms of the legal affairs committee. “But the rules are very clear. From that, we are sure that we will keep them,” he added.

The economic and monetary affairs comittee (EMAC) has asked Parliament bosses to give it control of amending controversial new proposals governing the audit of big companies.

But Lehne said this directive is pure company law and “nothing to do with accounting standards” – a financial services area covered by EMAC.

Meanwhile, the committee for civil liberties, justice and home affairs has asked for jurisdiction over the Rome II regulation governing applicable law in cross-border disputes and new rules on enforcing payment orders. Other issues up for grabs include a law covering cross-border mergers and design protection.

Diana Wallis, a British Liberal, is furious at the prospect of losing a year of work spent drafting a report during the previous legislature on the Rome II proposals – a dossier eagerly watched by business groups, such as publishers worried about libel rules in foreign countries. She said many of the Parliament’s best legal brains sit on the legal affairs committee – if the dossiers were lost, they would be sat wasting their time discussing mundane issues, she warned.

“We would get a lame-duck committee dealing with immunities,” she said, referring to the job of deciding if MEPs can enjoy Parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

Other MEPs, however, were more relaxed about the power struggle.

Piia-Noora Kauppi, Finnish centre-right MEP who sits on both EMAC and the legal affairs committee, said the auditing rules were better suited to EMAC’s deputies, noting that they concern “prudential standards and how we manage them in the light of financial crises”.

An EMAC official said the committee hoped to be given the right to share the workload with the legal affairs committee if its attempt to become the lead committee failed.

Under the so-called Hughes procedure a second committee can table amendments to a draft law – and the lead committee cannot delete them.